


the woman in the ice

by JRC



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Depression, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Gen, Mages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 10:10:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10694856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JRC/pseuds/JRC
Summary: /*I recommend you don't read this if you struggle with depression.*/Taking a deep breath, I slow my trudge through the snowy wasteland, and let out a sigh, my breath clouding the air before my eyes. It’s perfect. Looking away from the frozen pond before me, I study the patch of snow I have stopped in. Scuffing my boots around, I clear a patch of dying grass and solid earth for my feet.Planting my feet firmly on the frozen ground, I roll my head from side to side, causing my neck to make a few soft popping sounds. To pull a muscle in the middle of such a strenuous act could be disastrous to say the least. I need complete focus. The theory is here—now I have only to put it into practice. This is my last chance—my only chance. It would work. It must work.





	the woman in the ice

Taking a deep breath, I slow my trudge through the snowy wasteland, and let out a sigh, my breath clouding the air before my eyes. It’s perfect. Looking away from the frozen pond before me, I study the patch of snow I have stopped in. Scuffing my boots around, I clear a patch of dying grass and solid earth for my feet.

Planting my feet firmly on the frozen ground, I roll my head from side to side, causing my neck to make a few soft popping sounds. To pull a muscle in the middle of such a strenuous act could be disastrous to say the least. I need complete focus. The theory is here—now I have only to put it into practice. This is my last chance—my only chance. It would work. It must work.

Shaking my hands out, I study the frozen pond before me, the glassy surface dusted with a light powder of freshly fallen snow. Taking a deep breath, I exhale, willing my breath to become the wind; and it does. The snowflakes that had accumulated on the unblemished pond surface take to the air, spinning and swirling as my exhalation carries them away, to settle in other piles of snow, where they belong.

Enough distractions. It is time. Now or never.

I close my eyes against the wind, tugging lightly at my robes, and will all the power in my being into the palms of my hands. Remember the motion. Grip, pull, will, release. I chant over and over in my head. Remember. Grip, pull, will, release. Grip, pull, will, release.

Grip. I reach out in front of me, squeezing my fingers shut around an invisible force—but it’s not invisible. I just can’t touch it with my bare hands. It’s cold, so cold. My fingers sting, it is so cold. But I need to do this. Keeping my hands shut tightly, I give my wrists an experimental twitch. Like trying to lift a sack of flour. Perfect.

Pull. I tighten my muscles, remembering to focus the brunt of the burden on my legs, instead of my back. Then, I force my arms to move, pulling upwards, palms facing the cloud-covered sky. The weight is immense. I can feel my joints creaking in protest. But it had to be this large. If it was not, it would never work. I can do this. I did it to the fountain in the courtyard, I can do it here too. It’s no different.

Will. I focus in on the weight in my hands, order it to remain where it is. Gravity is no longer the master of you, I tell it. I am. I am, and you will stay here, where I have brought you. I need you, I add more softly. Please. Please. Don’t make me beg. Please stay with me. I’d like to get to know you. I’d like to free you. Stay. Stay still, stay put, stay where I’ve brought you. Stay with me.

Release. I take a deep breath, and finally, give my aching wrists and frostbitten hands the break they have been screaming for since I began. The power ebbs from my body, leaving me weak and unbalanced. I remain standing through nothing short of a work of the Maker himself. My knees are wobbling beneath my robes, and my eyelids feel so heavy, I might never open them again. I can tell I am swaying ever so slightly from side to side, but I cannot fall.

I did it. I must watch it. I must know if it worked. I must know if they were right all along… or if there was some truth to the words inside my heart.

Momentarily blinded by the faint sunlight reflecting off the snow as I open my eyes, I blink a few times to orient myself. A sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh escapes my lips. I sink to my knees in the snow before me, so relieved to see the sight before me. Maker, it worked. It actually worked.

Before me, the pond has risen. Where before it lay inside its indentation in the ground, now it arcs up, frozen, in a mockery of a wave you might see in the ocean, crashing to shore. Sharp spires of ice attack its perimeter in elegant spikes, each one a claw that might tear open an unsuspecting throat at any time. And in the center of the chaos; the water rising up to strike anyone before it, the sharp teeth of ice guarding the edges… a silhouette. Just like I was told there would be. Two feet, legs crossed at the ankle. Soft, supple curves define its calves and thighs. Its arms are wrapped around its torso, as if it is hugging itself. Its head is turned to one side. Thin lips, a sloped nose, eyes shut. There is no hair, but there does not need to be. It… no. She. She is elegant. She is beautiful. She is radiant.

I cough, the long trek in the cold finally catching up to me. Expending so much magic at once, and in such a harsh environment… it was stupid. Yet somehow… I do not care. I cannot tear my eyes from the woman in the ice. Did it truly work? Is she there? Or am I merely imagining things? Did I have enough power for the spell? Will she awaken? Or is she only sleeping?

The woman moves within the ice, drawing a gasp from my parched throat. One hand disentangles itself from around her torso, and she reaches out, towards me. Her other arm moves next, hovering at her side, as her head also turns to face me. I am frozen in place—not by the cold, but rather, anticipation. Maker be praised. It worked. She is awake, she is alive. And she is… coming towards me.

I jump as the sound of ice cracking reaches my ears. Her fingers have reached the edge of the frozen pond, and yet still, she pushes forward. The cracking is the ice where her fingers touch—it splits into smaller pieces, seeming to creep back away from her fingers, as first one, then another fingertip part the ice… three, four… five fingers. She looked white in the ice, but her fingers turn blue, then purple, then red as they emerge from the solid water. Her whole hand is pressing forward… and now it is free. But the woman in the ice is not stopping. Forearm, elbow, shoulder… head. Torso. Hips. Thighs.

The woman in the ice is no longer in the ice.

I fall forward, prostrating myself before her, although my hands protest to being buried in the snow. “Please,” I beg, my voice raspy from disuse. “Please, my lady.” I hardly know what I’m saying. Tears have welled up in my eyes, and drip steadily into the snow beneath my face. What I ask for, I know not. But she will. She must. Right?

There is a sudden shock of extreme cold at the crown of my head, and I stay perfectly still, terrified to move and displease her. She must have touched my head. Why? Will she not speak? Will she not tell me what I need so desperately to hear? The cold touch subsides, and I hesitate before looking up. The woman stands there, studying me. Her eyes remain closed, but somehow… I know that makes no difference. She knows enough already.

“Please,” I murmur, my face contorting into an expression of desperation. “Please. I need to know. You must tell me. You must. I… I have nowhere left to turn. No one else to turn to.”

The silence drags on, neither one of us saying anything. I can feel the cold seeping into my skin from where my hands support my weight in the snow. My legs grow numb, blanketed on either side by fresh snow. My robes are thin, and do nothing to retain warmth. I cannot stay like this forever, but neither can I leave this place without the answers I seek.

The woman tilts her head to one side in confusion.

My arms give out, and I tumble forward into the snow, my whole body shaking as I tremble with the force of the despair that has claimed me once and for all.

She doesn’t know. She can’t help me. She was my last hope. Now I have nothing. I have no one. I have no purpose, no reason to push myself up from the snow, nowhere to go even if I did.

This is it. This is how I die. Curled up in a pile in the snow, in front of a structure of ice crafted from my own grief, and the last vestiges of hope I had harbored in my heart.

“I’m sorry,” a quiet voice comes from just behind my head. I do not open my eyes. An all-consuming cold settles just behind my body… pressing up against me like a lover might. The woman in the ice. “I did not mean to upset you.”

“I have been so lonely.” I can no longer feel my legs or arms. The cold behind my back creeps over the rest of my body, slowly but surely, like a blanket of frost unfurling across a wet surface from a block of ice. “I can feel the same loneliness in your heart. It is a poor gift in return for freeing me, but please… let me stay here with you. Even if only for a short while.”

“You came seeking purpose, validation, meaning,” the woman’s voice whispers, and I can feel her breath encasing my ear in a thin sheet of ice. “Let me help you. Let me give you purpose. Let me give you validation. Let me give you meaning.”

My breath is coming in smaller puffs, and less frequently. The woman in the ice sounds genuine. She sounds like she wants to help me. Like she wants to give me the things she offered. Not like the mages, who offer false praise, promises, and presents… or the Templars, who wish only for complete and utter control of every aspect of our lives… to reduce us to less than people…

Can life with the woman in the ice be any worse than what I have already endured? Should I accept her generous offer? Do I take what she so freely gives?

“Yes,” I breathe, a shuddering gasp that leaves me trembling all over.

From the imprint in the snow of two people embracing, a dark, cloaked figure rises, and releases an ear-piercing shriek. Two sets of rotting teeth gnash at the chilled air, and thin, veiny arms reach towards the sky, showing off chipped and filthy nails which cap gnarled hands, now shooting gouts of ice magic into the air. And so, Despair was born.


End file.
